Home workers ‘skive off’ five hours per week

A survey of 2,000 ‘at home workers’ has revealed that a staggering 90 per cent admit to bunking off regularly.

Nine out of ten confessed they are regularly distracted by food, FIFA and Facebook, while working remotely.

And astonishingly, one in three work at home Brits are so slack they don’t even bother getting out of their PJs all day and just work on a laptop in bed.

With an estimated 4.2 million UK people now working out of the office, not being able to keep an eye on remote workers is becoming increasingly worrying for business owners.

Bosses would be stunned to learn that they are paying their ‘hardworking’ full-time employees for 207 hours of work per year for graft they never do - that’s an average 4.5 hours per week.

Stay-at-home snacking and surfing

The research also revealed that while employees are meant to be working, stay-at-home staff scoff snacks, watch telly, play video games and surf the net, according to the poll.

A further one in ten even admit visiting family and friends while supposedly grafting.

The survey, carried out by Printerland.co.uk, revealed that four in ten people admit to completing less work at home than what they’d usually accomplish in an office.

Almost 40 per cent of blokes squirm out of office-working by saying they can “concentrate better” at home.

Even having an office set up at home doesn’t seem to get Brits going, as 36 per cent are still doing things unrelated to their work over five times a day.

A quarter of those surveyed said they liked working from home due to the flexibility of working whenever they liked, while 20 per cent had childcare issues, which prevented them working regular hours.

Two thirds of people chose to work at home to save on commuting time and travel costs while others had sneaky plans to catch up on soaps they missed or even do a spot of knitting.

However, Entrepreneur.com listed the top homeworking benefits - from an employer’s point of view.

1. They’ll waste less time commuting.

Cutting out a commute can be both a huge morale booster and a huge time saver. Employees will also waste less money on gas or public transportation.

2. They’ll be more productive.

One Stanford study found that employees who work from home are 13 percent more productive compared with their in-office counterparts.

3. They’ll be happier.

Everyone seems to be talking about work-life balance these days, and there’s no better way to improve the work-life balance of your employees than to let them work from home.

4. It’s easier than ever.

You can be connected to the office every minute of every day if you want to, thanks to the Internet. The concept of working from home might have seemed outlandish 20 years ago, but this is the 21st century. You can find access to wifi almost anywhere, and tools like GoToMeeting and Skype make remote communication a breeze.

5. You won’t have to pay for office space.

Working from home means either no office or at the very least, a lot less office space. If you don’t want to make the switch to a completely remote environment, try staggering your employees’ work-from-home days to save on office space.

6. You won’t have to pay for office supplies.

No one likes doing bulk orders for office supplies. By having employees work from home, you can cut out a lot of these useless expenditures.

7. You won’t have to pay for office snacks.

Same goes for office snacks as office supplies. IBM has saved about $100 million annually since beginning its remote-work program.

8. No more wasting time on useless meetings.

Remember the productivity thing? Well, a lot of that comes from cutting all the useless meetings and other time wasters that are ubiquitous in an office environment.

9. You can hire the best, no matter where they are.

No office means the ability to work with anyone in the world. Freelance networks like Toptal (with its notoriously tough location-independent screening process) have capitalized on this concept by connecting top companies with the very best software developers from all around the world.